Vowel insertion after coda plosives in the dialect of Paraíba (PB): reflections on the establishment of syllabic and social boundaries

Felipe Santos Dos Reis,Rubens Marques De Lucena

doi:10.51359/2175-294x.2020.241306

Abstract

The present study aimed to verify how Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers born in the city of Campina Grande (PB) produce coda plosives in word-medial and -final positions, considering the possibilities of dealing with stray consonants in BP. Thus, 960 tokens of syllables closed by /p, t, k, b, d, g/ were recorded in audio and submitted for multivariate analysis. The results indicate that the application of the vowel insertion rule is influenced by two internal factors, namely the stray consonants and the words’ etymology, and two extralinguistic ones, that is, speakers’ gender and their L2 proficiency levels.

Highlights

IntroductionBased on the definition of epenthesis as an “addition of a phonetic segment in word-medial position” (XAVIER; MATEUS, 1990, p. 146 apud MASSINI-CAGLIARI, 2015, p. 283), it is possible to observe several types of structures which are likely to trigger the emergence of an epenthetic vowel (which usually surfaces as [i] in the context of pretonic and tonic syllables or [ɪ] in posttonic syllables), due to syllable structure violations
Based on the definition of epenthesis as an “addition of a phonetic segment in word-medial position” (XAVIER; MATEUS, 1990, p. 146 apud MASSINI-CAGLIARI, 2015, p. 283), it is possible to observe several types of structures which are likely to trigger the emergence of an epenthetic vowel, due to syllable structure violations
When illegal consonants occur in coda position, they are referred to as “stray consonants” (C’), which means that these segments are not associated to any syllabic node, because they are not allowed in syllable-final position (COLLISCHONN, 2004)

Summary

Introduction

Based on the definition of epenthesis as an “addition of a phonetic segment in word-medial position” (XAVIER; MATEUS, 1990, p. 146 apud MASSINI-CAGLIARI, 2015, p. 283), it is possible to observe several types of structures which are likely to trigger the emergence of an epenthetic vowel (which usually surfaces as [i] in the context of pretonic and tonic syllables or [ɪ] in posttonic syllables), due to syllable structure violations. As we have already seen, this variable phenomenon was investigated by Lucena and Alves (2010), who carried out a sociolinguistic research to verify, among other objectives, the incidence of CCW in the dialects from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul and the northeastern state of Paraíba, as spoken by 22 undergraduate students enrolled in Language and Literature courses Their informants were asked to read carrier sentences with words in both English and Portuguese containing /p/, /k/, and /f/ in codas followed by the coronal plosive /t/ in the subsequent syllable, as in “optar” (“to opt” ), “pacto” (“pact”), “afta” (“canker sore”), “captain”, “doctor”, “after”, etc. We explicit all the words used in the data collection instrument, as well as the steps adopted in conducting the research

Method

Findings

Participants